Dorothy grows up

Tuesday

Nov 27, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 27, 2007 at 1:20 AM

By Kinney Littlefield, Associated Press

Los Angeles | No dancing down the yellow brick road for Zooey Deschanel, star of Sci Fi Channel's new Emerald City adaptation, Tin Man. And no warbling Over the Rainbow a la Judy Garland, either."It's postmodern, more like Indiana Jones than a fairy tale," said Deschanel, whose Dorothy - the role immortalized by Garland in The Wizard of Oz - is a disaffected, motorcycle-riding waitress called DG.Based on L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which inspired the 1939 film classic, Sci Fi's six-hour Tin Man is not a musical but a brooding, special effects-driven fantasy."The book was written in 1900 and its story still lives," said Robert Halmi Sr., one the executive producers."It's a coming-of-age story," Deschanel said of the miniseries airing Sunday through Dec. 4."Here's DG acting out in a teenage way before she gets swept up by the storm," the actress said of her character's ride to the alternate universe of the O.Z., or Outer Zone, on the tail of a Kansas tornado. "Then she's forced to grow up a little bit and find out how brave she is and how smart she is. On this journey, she becomes an adult."Along the way DG meets creatures and crises that never crossed Garland's path.Still, fans of the 1939 film will recognize the classic scarecrow in zipper-headed Glitch (Alan Cumming), the cowardly lion in the wolverine-human psychic, Raw (Raoul Trujillo), and Dorothy's little dog in the shape-shifter, Toto (Blu Mankuma).There's a wizard of sorts in Richard Dreyfuss' vapor-sniffing Mystic Man.There's also a yellow brick road, although - in keeping with the O.Z.'s shadowy, retro-futuristic look - it barely glimmers.And the title character, ex-cop Wyatt Cain (Neal McDonough), called a tin man for his tin badge, is a far more embittered type than Jack Haley's metal man was in the movie musical.Yes, Halmi said, Tin Man is a "bit darker. To make a classic understood by young people today you have to talk an entirely different language." That language includes a wickedly witchy twist on family ties that Oz creator Baum never conjured.And the evil sorceress Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson) gets more screen time than Margaret Hamilton's cackling Wicked Witch of the West, did in the Garland film.